Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  ‘Mr Scrope.’

  ‘Ned’s had him once already.’

  ‘I can’t see Papa trusting anyone else.’

  ‘Then he’ll have to do.’ Betsy-Ann spits into her palm. ‘Shake on it? You spit first,’ she complains when Sophia fails to copy her actions. ‘Otherwise there’s no luck.’

  Sophia lets a drop of spittle fall into her palm and presses it against Betsy-Ann Blore’s.

  Sophia is rational.

  ‘Soft as a child’s,’ says Betsy-Ann Blore, examining her fingers.

  Had Hetty made this remark, Sophia would have resented it. One gentlewoman no more congratulates another upon her well-kept hands than upon her being clean, or having enough to eat. To this woman, of course, a fine hand must seem extraordinary. And yet Betsy-Ann Blore’s clasp, though coarser than her own, did not feel calloused.

  ‘I should like to ask you something, Mrs Zedland.’

  ‘Pray ask.’ She wonders what the woman can want: a promise of protection afterwards?

  ‘Have you any notion how your husband earns his bread? If you like, I can show you.’

  ‘O, no! I never game.’

  ‘Don’t call it gaming. A demonstration pure and simple, only I must have a flat to my sharp.’

  ‘A loser, you mean? I must endeavour to lose?’

  ‘You won’t be able to help yourself. I’m telling you that fair and square, no money riding on it. Not a farthing.’

  Sophia is sorely tempted. Here, at last, is intimacy, of a kind: if not Edmund’s love, at least his secrets.

  Miss Blore grins. ‘Come, the wickedness won’t rub off on you.’ She commences pulling and twisting at her own fingers as if to work them loose in their sockets. ‘You might even call it edifying. That’s what Sam used to say.’

  ‘And how, pray, can it be that?’

  ‘It’s as well to know how the traps are laid.’

  Wise as serpents but harmless as doves. Were it impossible, the Lord would not have enjoined it upon his followers: Sophia’s resistance shivers to pieces in an instant.

  ‘We have cards somewhere,’ she says, rising to ring the bell.

  ‘No need. Look here.’ Miss Blore produces from her knotting-bag a small packet which proves to be a deck bound in a silk handkerchief.

  ‘Those are marked, I suppose?’

  ‘First, a shuffle.’ She snaps the pack into two halves between her thumbs, then reunites them, two streams flowing into one, in a motion so flawless and compelling that it suggests to Sophia (may God forgive her the comparison) the Red Sea parting for the Children of Israel then surging back together, to the destruction of the Heathen.

  ‘You see I know my business,’ says Betsy-Ann Blore. She commences a different kind of shuffle, taking a section of the pack each time and passing it from back to front, the cards chopping into one another.

  ‘Not so clever as your first,’ says Sophia. ‘I myself can do this one.’

  ‘Can you? If you’ll be so kind as to remove the things from the table ―’ Miss Blore spreads the cards there, each of the four suits in turn and every card in its proper rank. ‘And do they come out like this?’

  Sophia is filled with an unreasoning, childlike delight. ‘No, indeed! Is that Edmund’s trick?’

  ‘Anybody can learn it. You see the rig?’

  ‘Is that a card?’

  ‘The rig is the trick, the profit. In plain English, the use of it.’

  Sophia nods. ‘Should you deal now, you’d know everyone’s hand.’

  ‘Not bad – for a daisy. And I can bestow the royalty where I like.’ She folds up the pack again and clears her throat.

  Sophia says, ‘I see no marks. Are they marked?’

  ‘Naturally. I should like to show you my particular favourite, only I’m out of practice.’

  ‘Could you try?’

  ‘A miss is as good as a mile, with this one. If it don’t come off, it’s nothing.’ She hesitates, weighing the pack in one hand, then sits back in her chair, moving her shoulders up and down as if weighing them also. A change comes over her, a gravity that Sophia has never before seen on a female face. It is, she realises, the air of someone for whom things have passed beyond play. So must the great lord look whose entire estate rests on the turn of a card, or the athlete whose fame calls for a tour de force greater than anything previously achieved.

  Betsy-Ann tenses her fingers. The cards seem to crouch in her palm, then spring, arcing through the air into her opposite hand, a moving bridge, nowhere joined yet with all the appearance of it. The entire pack having made the crossing, she pins it down with her thumb.

  Both women exhale in the same instant, Betsy-Ann’s features relaxing into complacency. ‘Ned can’t do that. He hasn’t the control.’

  ‘He wouldn’t anyway. Would he?’

  On hearing this, Betsy-Ann Blore looks oddly like Sophia’s old governess, when some question of her pupil piqued her interest – which, admittedly, was not often. ‘And why’s that, Mrs Zedland?’

  Sophia is excited by her own perceptiveness. ‘Were I a sharp, I should take care to appear clumsy and unpractised ―’

  She breaks off, recalling a long-past day in Bath. Its events now appear in quite a different light: Mr and Mrs Chase, such a name, but how was she to know? And how was it that they, in their turn, failed to note Zedland? But now she recalls that Mrs Chase tracked her for days beforehand, until satisfied that she was indeed the innocent she appeared. The Chases were, she supposes, mere beginners in the gentle art of fleecing. Edmund’s more powerful shears must have left them stinging for days afterwards: what a scalping he gave them, and how little she realised the game being played out! Her own life seems to her almost the stuff of mythology, frequently recounted yet imperfectly understood. Was he, she wonders, merely securing the prey to himself? Was there ever the least affection in his heart?

  ‘Is something troubling you, Mrs Zedland?’

  ‘I was thinking of that last trick. Such skill, and no use to it. It seems a pity.’

  ‘Lord, Mrs Zedland, you talk like a sharp!’ Sophia stiffens before realising the woman is rallying her. ‘It serves to entertain.’ She half-smiles at Sophia, as if gauging whether she is sufficiently entertained. ‘Let me tell you something,’ she adds. ‘I’ve been making observation of your fams.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘These.’ She indicates Sophia’s hands. ‘Made for the books. Should you like to learn?’

  Betsy-Ann holds out the pack of cards. As a child, Sophia had constantly impressed upon her the danger of accepting any object from the lower sort, with their dirty and disgusting habits, but what does that matter now, when she and this woman have sealed their bargain by shaking upon a gob of spittle? Besides, the deck looks as fresh as any Sophia played with as a girl. Uppermost lies the Knave of Hearts, his profile at once melancholy and debauched.

  Sophia says, ‘He has the wrong hair colour.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s always yellow.’

  ‘I’ve known it black.’

  ‘Black!’

  There’s something unsettling in the gaze of Betsy-Ann Blore as she stares at Sophia: the eyes are so very like his. She seems about to say something of importance, but evidently thinks better of it, for she lowers her eyes to the cards and the momentary frisson is past.

  Sophia thinks: They are unutterably a pair. Further than that she cannot go; beyond she senses a bleak shadow-perspective in which she, and not this woman, figures as the interloper upon a marriage intended by nature. Who can say what fruit Edmund’s natural gifts might have borne, had he been provided in childhood with the means, material and spiritual, of an upright life? The sins of the fathers, and mothers, are visited upon the children. He himself has not had justice. Nor has this woman.

  Libertine thoughts, again. That the world is unjust does not excuse human wickedness, which is the root of much of the world’s injustice, and so the sins and excuses go round in a self-perpetuating circle. She takes the
cards, moves the Knave to the bottom of the pack and begins to shuffle, accustoming herself to their texture and weight.

  45

  For two nights he has walked without direction, turning away if anyone should approach. The Pinched Wife has probably advertised a reward for his capture: Eliza told him, once, about the money that is offered. So he hides away during daylight, resting his feet on which the shoes, good enough for padding around Dog Eye’s house, have raised scalding welts.

  Even in the dark he is not safe. Last night he passed through a gate and into a grassy place with a sour, foamy smell: the smell of rotten apples, of an orchard. He was about to drop to his knees and feel about him for the fruit when a man stepped out of the darkness and pulled him towards the orchard wall. Fortunate screamed and kicked out. He ran on his blistered feet perhaps a hundred steps before he heard a cry behind him – ‘You shall have a guinea!’ – and realised the man had not given chase. After that, he took off his neck-linen, so as to melt more completely into the darkness, and limped on, through other scents: roast chicken, the sour odour of mould, smoke and hops belching from tavern doors, cesspits. This is surely Romeville, with its fierce, dirty, exuberant people: a place of danger as well as joy. If he can once get to Dog Eye, and be taken back into his service, he will be safe enough. And where would Dog Eye be, if not Romeville?

  After escaping the man he strolled listlessly about, stopping once to buy hot meat and bread in a dish. It did not satisfy him, but he knew he must not spend more. He continued walking until towards dawn he slipped, exhausted, between two bent railings and into a churchyard. His first thought was to lie among the stones, but a bad person might enter and be upon him before he could wake. Next to the church he found a better place: a flight of steps leading down into the ground. At the bottom of these steps he crouches throughout the day, coming out only to relieve himself – seldom necessary, since he seldom eats – or to scoop rainwater from a marble pot on a nearby grave.

  Mr Watson did not believe in baptising his slaves. Fortunate went once or twice with the Wife to church, where the blank-eyed statues filled him with dread. When he learned that corpses lay beneath the earth, both inside and out, he felt the full terror of the place. This hole in which he hides seems as if it would go down to the world of the dead, but it is stopped at the bottom and the ghosts contained by a stout wooden door, against which Fortunate rests his back.

  He does not regret leaving the house. The Spirit has already brought bad luck upon it. Dog Eye was the first to go, then Mrs Launey, a person of some consequence, also vanished and Fortunate felt panic spread among the rest of the inhabitants. And yet he is not safe here, either. Once his money runs out, hunger lies in wait; indeed, it has already begun to tickle him with its claws. It occurs to him to go back to the orchard and try to pick up with the man, but perhaps it was a trick and he will not be given a guinea, but beaten and robbed. It is some comfort that he has weapons, but they cannot work themselves: he must not become too weak and confused. He must find a roof to lie under, and food to eat.

  The cemetery is surrounded by stiff dark trees and twining shrubs that throw themselves over the railings. Sounds from the streets wash across its green shadows: unseen horses trotting and whinnying, wheels on cobbles, people arguing or laughing and the occasional shrill squeal of a child at play. Fortunate dreams of being shouted at by the Wife, of beef pie, smoking hot, of the dead coming up out of the ground, and once, of strange animals, purple-coloured, lying peaceful in burrows. He is woken by people scuffling and panting together in the grass. He creeps to the top of the steps but can distinguish nothing more than a rolling, swaying mass between two of the stones. After a while a woman’s voice says, ‘My arse is frozen,’ and if Fortunate were less frightened he would laugh.

  He soon learns that certain sounds return each night: a hubbub of voices, the whine of a violin, tuneless singing, the occasional shout, and along with these the chink of plates and a hot thick scent of gravy that brings the spit to his mouth. A tavern of some kind, just along the street. He wonders how he can turn this to account. Should he step in and offer to sell his neck linen, or the crippling shoes, or ask for some work? There are evil men in those places. He fears for his stock of money, obtained by raiding one of the kitchen jars. Should he meet with robbers in the darkness he will lose it all.

  On the fifth morning he weeps while trying to straighten his arms. The cold, and hugging himself all the night, have tied him in knots; he understands that he must find a warmer bed or die. He takes a knife he brought with him from the house and scoops out a hole directly under the church wall, slots most of his coins into the exposed earth, presses them down and pulls the grass across. Nobody would notice the wounded place but for good measure he covers it with a scrap of brick. Now he has in his pocket a few pence, no more. He lies back and dozes awhile, intending to go to the tavern as soon as it is night.

  He wakes with a start: the church bell is tolling, a dreary, insistent sound. Fortunate rubs his eyes and stares up into the sky overhead: it is a pale grey, lit but not warmed by the pallid sunshine of this country. He creeps up the stairs until he can just see over the top. Tugging a child by the hand, a woman hurries through the tombstones. Beyond her, men are carrying a coffin along the churchyard path followed by a procession of men and women holding cloths to their eyes.

  Hoping nobody chooses to walk near these steps, Fortunate waits until everyone has gone inside the church before rising and rapidly circling the graveyard. He finds the pit on the same side of the church as his flight of steps, but some way off: the mourners will not come near his hiding place. He wonders that in his cold, cramped sleep he did not hear it being dug.

  He returns to the door at the bottom of the steps and after what seems a long time, hears people coming out from the building. A man is speaking near the grave. Then they begin to come away. Footsteps pass, more closely than he expected, and he stiffens with fear. At last there is no more sound, only the usual overflow from the street.

  He allows himself to sleep.

  When he next wakes, the sun has gone behind the church tower. Fortunate puts up his head, an animal sniffing the air. He climbs stiffly out of his burrow and goes over to the place where the hole was. It has grown upwards into a mound of thin brown earth, with flowers laid across it and to one side, almost hidden by leaves, a thing he has never seen before: a kind of metal tooth.

  He does not like the look of this tooth. He goes to one of the prickly shrubs planted there and breaks off a branch; then, standing well back from the mound, he uses the branch to brush away the earth around the metal. He then goes to the other side of the mound and tries there, and so works his way round. At last he can see what the thing is: a grinning steel mouth stretches over the grave, as if to eat the corpse.

  A trap has been set.

  Perhaps the person in this grave was especially wicked, and this was done to prevent him coming out. But what if he should climb halfway and be cut in pieces? He hugs himself, shivering with disgust. In the distance, cheerful and insolent, comes the opening skirl of the tavern fiddle.

  46

  Palpable genius! Can anything be so entrancing? Sophia deals again and again, aspiring to the practised motion which deceives the eye and, from a swift river of passing images, hooks out the critical card. One must learn to love the cards: not merely in their ideal aspect, their suits and significations – anyone who can play understands that much – but physically. It is a marriage: hand in hand, will wooing inconstancy. One must allow for youth and inexperience in a fresh pack, search out the slackening and dissolution, the give, in an old one. She slides her thumb down the edge of the pack and finds, as expected, His Majesty the King of Diamonds.

  ‘It tickles me, Madam,’ says Betsy-Ann Blore, ‘how you’ve taken to the books.’

  Sophia fans out the cards into a circle, then snaps them shut. ‘I shall at least have the means of supporting myself.’

  ‘No word from Ned, then.’
>
  ‘No. Papa’s been talking with Mr Scrope.’

  ‘And what’ll Mr Scrope do?’

  ‘He has yet to decide.’

  ‘Lord, what a time he takes,’ grumbles Miss Blore.

  Does she suspect she is being deceived? If nothing else, the events of the past few months have tutored Sophia in prudence. She no longer doubts that Betsy-Ann Blore hates Edmund now, but reconciliation must always remain a possibility. Such things have happened before.

  In fact Mr Scrope’s plans are already drawn up, and despite his not being au fait with all the facts of the case, demonstrate a certain force of mind. No letter to ‘Ned Hartry’ will be despatched to Mrs Hartry’s bawdy-house or any other address. For fear of Papa’s rushing and bungling, Sophia chose not to reveal Edmund’s alias. Instead, she told Mr Scrope that private papers, now unfortunately destroyed, linked Edmund with the house of one Kitty Hartry, a woman of bad reputation, and asked was it worth writing to him there. Mr Scrope’s opinion (though not in so many words) was that such a letter (far from restraining Edmund, as was Betsy-Ann’s notion) might spur him to bolt – if indeed he should be there at all. Then Papa was very much in favour of advertisements, and it was with great difficulty that Mr Scrope persuaded him against them, arguing that such measures tend to produce fraudulent sightings. The end of all this sound and fury is that a letter has been despatched to Mr Fielding at Bow Street with a view to obtaining the services of a discreet and courageous officer. Only when Sophia has met with this man and found him satisfactory will she reveal the identity of her husband, if husband he is.

  Nor has Titus been advertised for: Sophia has not time, energy or inclination to pursue him. Since he has proved so unsatisfactory and ungrateful, let him try his fortunes elsewhere.

  *

  ‘Do say you’ll come,’ urges Hetty. ‘Letcher is as fretted about it as I am. He says a woman ought not to be left alone at such a time.’

  ‘You’re too kind,’ says Sophia, ‘but I really think it unnecessary. There’s nowhere I’m less likely to be troubled by Edmund than here.’